Validity of the SF-36 Health Survey Questionnaire in Two Iranian Samples

This paper presents the finding of two studies which examining the validity and reliability of the Short Form 36 Health Survey Questionnaire (SF-36) tapping a wide range of physical and mental health constructs. In the first study, 404 male and female university students completed the SF-36 questionnaire. The questionnaire  was re-administrated to a subsample of 120 of the original espondents one week after the first assessment. Considerable evidence was found for the reliability of the FS-36 questionnaire (cronbach & values for eight dimensions of the SF-36 ranged from 0.70 to 0.85, and the corresponding values for test-retest coefficients ranged from 0.43 to 0.79). In the second study, the validity of the SF-36 questionnaire was examined through distinguishing between groups with expected health differences. In this study, 48 healthy subjects were compared with 84 ill subjects on all eight dimensions of the SF-36. The scores of these two groups were significantly on all eight dimensions. These results provide support for the SF-36 as an instrument for measuring health perception in Iranian adult samples. According to the present finding, the SF-36 is easy to use, acceptable to subjects and fulfills stringent criteria of reliability and validity. The present authors highly recommend further studies aimed at examining the sensitivity of SF-36 to health status changes over time.